The executive chef isn’t the only person in the kitchen. In fact, the top toque will be the first to tell you that without the rest of the culinary brigade, the kitchen would go up in flames. In this new column, we chat with the men and women responsible for executing the dishes that land on your plate and get the inside story on life on the line. Line cook (and Sauce intern) Darren Arabie, 24, has worked fast and furious at Jilly’s Cupcake Bar and Café under the direction of chef Dana Holland for three years. Here, he recalls the time he lost a fight with an industrial kitchen mixer that kept him off the line for three months and shares his favorite ways to break in new crewmembers.
“I was about to start a project … so instead of setting up there and Dana coming in and moving me in few minutes … I’m just going to move to the other side of the table. So I grabbed the [cart holding the] mixer and hit a little divot in the ground, and the mixer started to go. At first, I tried to catch it and realized, No way, it’s way too heavy for that… I realized it was going, and I tried to get out of the way and one of my feet did not make it. … Someone called [Dana] and let him know I had to go the hospital, and I think the first question he and [owner Jill Segal] and everyone asked was, ‘Well, how’s the mixer?'”
“You know the coffee makers that dispense really hot water to brew coffee? It’s never-ending hot water. You tell [a new server] at end of the shift, ‘We need you to empty out the hot water.’ So they get a pitcher, and they just keep going back and forth. It’s like tap water – it doesn’t stop. Eventually you have to tell them it doesn’t. And if you have a walk-in cooler [you can] tell a new cook, ‘Why don’t you go get the clam legs?’ … People will just look and look and being new, they don’t want to come back and say, ‘I don’t know what that is. I can’t find it.’ So they just keep looking. It’s awesome – it never gets old.”
-photo by Michelle Volanksy
This article appears in Guide to the Holidays 2013.